Interzone 251 by edited by Andy Cox Page B

“That’s going to cost you.”
    Gin leaned in. “Leor, you tripped and fell on your own fist, understand? Otherwise me and Sel, your backup team, might just be so distressed that we could slip and let an accident happen down in the mine. You get me?”
    Fari got it, and by the look on Leor’s face, he did too.
    “Come on, Fari,” Mer said, “I’ll buy you a drink.”
    He pulled her down the hall to the elevators. Huj followed behind them, the ghost of a cold smile haunting the edges of his otherwise stony expression.
    “You should save your money, Mer,” she said. “You should be free.”
    “Yeah, well, so should you. You’re the best damned blast tech on this rock, and I don’t like the idea of being free because I got credits that should have been yours,” he said. “I’m no good at maths, but the three of us’ll figure out a way to make it balance. Right, Huj?”
    “Sure, long as she don’t really take all my protein rations,” Huj said. “I’m a growing man.”
    “Huj, if you grow any more, we’re…” She stopped talking as the conference room door opened again behind them, and Borrn and the Rep stepped out. Leor’s team was still by the door, Leor leaning against the wall holding his face.
    “What happened here?” the Rep demanded.
    Fari closed her eyes, fearing the worst, and then heard Leor, resentment clear in every word: “I fell, sir. I must have tripped.”
    “And you’re the chief tech for Team Blue? I guess that explains how you could be doing so poorly in comparison to a woman,” the Rep said. He turned to Borrn. “Supervisor, you must be especially beloved of the One to get any ore out of this place at all, the way you’ve been burdened by personnel.”
    The elevator chimed, door opening, and Huj, Mer, and Fari tumbled into it as if it were the last lifeboat out. “Let’s get the Hell out of here,” Mer mumbled under his breath, and leaned on the down button until the doors closed and the car moved on its way.
    “Thanks, Huj,” she said.
    “S’okay,” he said. “Shoulda beat Leor down months ’go, shamed I didn’t.”
    It had been Huj who had found her, out in the tunnels of a two-team dig on Rock 72, after Leor had caught her alone. This was the closest they’d ever come to talking about it. Fari thought she would be happy if this was the last conversation about it, too.
    They rode down to the concourse level in silence, each of them no doubt thinking or remembering things they wished they weren’t.
    The concourse had a few shops, nearly a dozen bars, and the zone-run brothel. Fari turned away, not wanting to see the women standing in the doorway there. She and her team would spend short, hard lives out in the cold dark among the rocks and stars, until either the radiation, a mining accident, drink, skunk, or suicide repossessed their souls from the Owners for good. Not all women owned by Baselle Mining Corp were that fortunate.
    Not all? Not many
, she thought.
Maybe one or two, if that.
    Not that she didn’t also count herself lucky against Baselle’s “free” wives; property of their fathers until they were old enough to marry, then property of their husbands until the day they died. Not much difference, she thought, between that and the brothel, except that you got to hate many people for a short time each instead of one or two forever. She could remember the few conversations she’d had with wives vividly – the vehement assurance that they had the best of all possible lives, the dull, scared, lifeless eyes behind the words.
    “Craphole?” Huj suggested. It was Station’s most popular bar.
    She shook her head. “I need to hit Property first, and you know the Craphole is Leor’s usual hang. Meet you guys in the Rockhard in ten?”
    “Sure. Save you a seat,” Mer said, and he and Huj walked off into the concourse towards the neon-lit blackness of the Rockhard.
    She stood up straighter, ran one hand over her hair to flatten down the unruly spikes